What's In A Name?

 by Randy Lawrence

Juliet Capulet had it all wrong.  Actually, she had a bunch of stuff turned 'round, but this one thing in particular.  

In Act 2, Scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare has her asking Romeo, "What's in a name?"  

She answers for him (Juliet has always struck me as REALLY annoying):  "That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet."

Names don't matter, she is reassuring him, decrying the Capulet/Montague blood feud keeping the hormonally heated lovebirds apart.  Of course all of that goes haywire until (spoiler alert) the stage is littered with dead bodies at play's end.

When I was teaching, we read "Romeo and Juliet" as a comedy.  All of those folks are too dopey to be taken seriously enough for drama.  But the name thing bothers me because, dear Juliet, names DO matter!

Take my friend Pocket, for example.  Pocket is a firecracker of a Firelight setter puppy soon to enter her first hunting season.  Her name is "Pocket" because of her diminutive size at birth and because Lynn Dee simply couldn't bear to add another female human name to her pack.

"We are starting to sound like a chapter out of 'Little Women'," she complained.

After much discussion and name bandying, Pocket became Pocket after "Trinket" was judged to be too evocative of some tourist trap tchotchke.  

Thus, Pocket.

Lynn Dee asked me at the time if I liked the name.  I lied and said I did, all the while thinking, "Pocket?  Are you serious here right now? 

"You're naming this beautiful little dog after the thing I always forget to empty before doing laundry, where spare change, horse treats, fence staples, gas pump receipts, the wingnut off a dog crate, and breath mints are mushed and melded by washer and dryer into grotesque proof of geriatric oblivion?"

But several months later, I've come around (on the puppy, not laundry).

Today, I love Pocket's upbeat, confident charisma, her fascination with the pigeons she stalks when she visits her friend Bryan, the way she has settled into the Firelight pack hierarchy.  Photos of her around Firelight HQ show a certain demeanor we labeled in less enlightened times as "tomboy":  rough and tumble, adventurous, smart, sensible, and unsinkable.

I have come to love her unconventional name, too.  

Lynn Dee had never heard the old grouse trial jargon about a dog that's always hunting "in the pocket."  But I think of that when I think of Pocket's mother Annie's fast, useful range, and what I imagine Pocket's hunt will be like.

I love the name "Pocket" because it doesn't sound like the names of any of her packmates  or mine or other dogs in the Firelight totem.  I love it because it rhymes with "rocket" and "sprocket" and "Johnny Crockett" and "hock it" and other bits of tripe that can contribute to silliness when she and I are out of earshot of others this fall.  

I even love it because "In The Pocket" is my favorite James Taylor album.

Mostly I love the name "Pocket" because it's as fresh as she is, as in both "original" and "cheeky."

In their little picture book entitled "Bless The Dogs," the Monks of New Skete write, "Part of the joy in getting a dog is naming it.  In Eden, Adam was given the responsibility of naming the animals, and we have inherited his task."

"A name not only defines," the monks insist, "it expresses the hopes we bring to the relationship."

What's in a name, fair Juliet?

Everything.